IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/infome/v8y2014i1p89-97.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Are the authors of highly cited articles also the most productive ones?

Author

Listed:
  • Abramo, Giovanni
  • Cicero, Tindaro
  • D’Angelo, Ciriaco Andrea

Abstract

Ever more frequently, governments have decided to implement policy measures intended to foster and reward excellence in scientific research. This is in fact the intended purpose of national research assessment exercises. These are typically based on the analysis of the quality of the best research products; however, a different approach to analysis and intervention is based on the measure of productivity of the individual scientists, meaning the overall impact of their entire scientific production over the period under observation. This work analyzes the convergence of the two approaches, asking if and to what measure the most productive scientists achieve highly cited articles; or vice versa, what share of highly cited articles is achieved by scientists that are “non-top” for productivity. To do this we use bibliometric indicators, applied to the 2004–2008 publications authored by academics of Italian universities and indexed in the Web of Science.

Suggested Citation

  • Abramo, Giovanni & Cicero, Tindaro & D’Angelo, Ciriaco Andrea, 2014. "Are the authors of highly cited articles also the most productive ones?," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 8(1), pages 89-97.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:infome:v:8:y:2014:i:1:p:89-97
    DOI: 10.1016/j.joi.2013.10.011
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1751157713000886
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.joi.2013.10.011?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Giovanni Abramo & Ciriaco Andrea D'Angelo & Flavia Di Costa, 2008. "Assessment of sectoral aggregation distortion in research productivity measurements," Research Evaluation, Oxford University Press, vol. 17(2), pages 111-121, June.
    2. Leo Egghe, 2006. "Theory and practise of the g-index," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 69(1), pages 131-152, October.
    3. Rodrigo Costas & Thed N. Leeuwen & María Bordons, 2012. "Referencing patterns of individual researchers: Do top scientists rely on more extensive information sources?," Journal of the Association for Information Science & Technology, Association for Information Science & Technology, vol. 63(12), pages 2433-2450, December.
    4. Lutz Bornmann & Loet Leydesdorff, 2011. "Which cities produce more excellent papers than can be expected? A new mapping approach, using Google Maps, based on statistical significance testing," Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, Association for Information Science & Technology, vol. 62(10), pages 1954-1962, October.
    5. Michel Zitt & Suzy Ramanana-Rahary & Elise Bassecoulard, 2005. "Relativity of citation performance and excellence measures: From cross-field to cross-scale effects of field-normalisation," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 63(2), pages 373-401, April.
    6. Amanda H Goodall, 2005. "Should top universities be led by top researchers, and are they?," General Economics and Teaching 0510003, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    7. Ciriaco Andrea D'Angelo & Cristiano Giuffrida & Giovanni Abramo, 2011. "A heuristic approach to author name disambiguation in bibliometrics databases for large-scale research assessments," Journal of the Association for Information Science & Technology, Association for Information Science & Technology, vol. 62(2), pages 257-269, February.
    8. Ciriaco Andrea D'Angelo & Cristiano Giuffrida & Giovanni Abramo, 2011. "A heuristic approach to author name disambiguation in bibliometrics databases for large‐scale research assessments," Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, Association for Information Science & Technology, vol. 62(2), pages 257-269, February.
    9. Abramo, Giovanni & Cicero, Tindaro & D’Angelo, Ciriaco Andrea, 2012. "Revisiting the scaling of citations for research assessment," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 6(4), pages 470-479.
    10. Rodrigo Costas & Thed N. van Leeuwen & María Bordons, 2012. "Referencing patterns of individual researchers: Do top scientists rely on more extensive information sources?," Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, Association for Information Science & Technology, vol. 63(12), pages 2433-2450, December.
    11. Linda Butler, 2007. "Assessing university research: A plea for a balanced approach," Science and Public Policy, Oxford University Press, vol. 34(8), pages 565-574, October.
    12. Abramo, Giovanni & D’Angelo, Ciriaco Andrea & Rosati, Francesco, 2013. "The importance of accounting for the number of co-authors and their order when assessing research performance at the individual level in the life sciences," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 7(1), pages 198-208.
    13. Robert J W Tijssen, 2003. "Scoreboards of research excellence," Research Evaluation, Oxford University Press, vol. 12(2), pages 91-103, August.
    14. Anthony F. J. Raan, 2006. "Comparison of the Hirsch-index with standard bibliometric indicators and with peer judgment for 147 chemistry research groups," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 67(3), pages 491-502, June.
    15. Abramo, Giovanni & Cicero, Tindaro & D’Angelo, Ciriaco Andrea, 2011. "A field-standardized application of DEA to national-scale research assessment of universities," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 5(4), pages 618-628.
    16. Baccini, A. & Barabesi, L. & Marcheselli, M. & Pratelli, L., 2012. "Statistical inference on the h-index with an application to top-scientist performance," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 6(4), pages 721-728.
    17. Hicks, Diana, 2012. "Performance-based university research funding systems," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 41(2), pages 251-261.
    18. Abramo, Giovanni & Cicero, Tindaro & D’Angelo, Ciriaco Andrea, 2013. "Individual research performance: A proposal for comparing apples to oranges," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 7(2), pages 528-539.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Abramo, Giovanni & D'Angelo, CiriacoAndrea & Di Costa, Flavia, 2024. "The moderating role of personal characteristics of authors in the publications’ quality for quantity trade-off," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 18(1).
    2. Freddy Hernán Pantoja Timarán & Sebastián David Pantoja Barrios, 2016. "Problemas y desafíos de la minería de oro artesanal y en pequena escala en Colombia," Revista Facultad de Ciencias Económicas, Universidad Militar Nueva Granada, vol. 24(2), pages 147-160, October.
    3. Vahid Garousi & João M. Fernandes, 2017. "Quantity versus impact of software engineering papers: a quantitative study," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 112(2), pages 963-1006, August.
    4. Lindahl, Jonas, 2018. "Predicting research excellence at the individual level: The importance of publication rate, top journal publications, and top 10% publications in the case of early career mathematicians," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 12(2), pages 518-533.
    5. Amanda Lucía Restrepo Londono & Claudia Inés Sepúlveda Rivillas, 2016. "Caracterización financiera de las empresas generadoras de energía colombianas (2005 – 2012)," Revista Facultad de Ciencias Económicas, Universidad Militar Nueva Granada, vol. 24(2), pages 63-84, October.
    6. Gutiérrez-Nieto, Begoña & Serrano-Cinca, Carlos, 2019. "20 years of research in microfinance: An information management approach," International Journal of Information Management, Elsevier, vol. 47(C), pages 183-197.
    7. Yu-Wei Chang, 2021. "Characteristics of high research performance authors in the field of library and information science and those of their articles," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 126(4), pages 3373-3391, April.
    8. Sergey Kolesnikov & Eriko Fukumoto & Barry Bozeman, 2018. "Researchers’ risk-smoothing publication strategies: Is productivity the enemy of impact?," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 116(3), pages 1995-2017, September.
    9. Díaz-Faes, Adrián A. & Costas, Rodrigo & Galindo, M. Purificación & Bordons, María, 2015. "Unravelling the performance of individual scholars: Use of Canonical Biplot analysis to explore the performance of scientists by academic rank and scientific field," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 9(4), pages 722-733.
    10. Huang, Ding-wei, 2016. "Positive correlation between quality and quantity in academic journals," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 10(2), pages 329-335.
    11. Patricia Laurens & Christian Le Bas & Linh Chi Vo, 2022. "Research collaborations in the field of management between Business Schools and Universities. The end of two separated worlds? [Les collaborations en recherche dans le domaine de la gestion entre B," Post-Print hal-03840331, HAL.
    12. Liang, Liming & Zhong, Zhen & Rousseau, Ronald, 2015. "Uncited papers, uncited authors and uncited topics: A case study in library and information science," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 9(1), pages 50-58.
    13. Abramo, Giovanni & D’Angelo, Ciriaco Andrea, 2015. "Ranking research institutions by the number of highly-cited articles per scientist," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 9(4), pages 915-923.
    14. Jonas Lindahl & Cristian Colliander & Rickard Danell, 2020. "Early career performance and its correlation with gender and publication output during doctoral education," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 122(1), pages 309-330, January.
    15. Jenny Paola Lis Gutiérrez & Clorith Angélica Bahos Olivera, 2016. "La participación femenina en publicaciones colombianas de economía y administración indexadas en Scopus (1974 – junio de 2014)," Revista Facultad de Ciencias Económicas, Universidad Militar Nueva Granada, vol. 24(2), pages 183-212, October.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Abramo, Giovanni & Cicero, Tindaro & D’Angelo, Ciriaco Andrea, 2015. "Should the research performance of scientists be distinguished by gender?," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 9(1), pages 25-38.
    2. Abramo, Giovanni & D’Angelo, Ciriaco Andrea, 2015. "Ranking research institutions by the number of highly-cited articles per scientist," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 9(4), pages 915-923.
    3. Abramo, Giovanni & D’Angelo, Ciriaco Andrea, 2015. "A methodology to compute the territorial productivity of scientists: The case of Italy," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 9(4), pages 675-685.
    4. Giovanni Abramo & Corrado Costa & Ciriaco Andrea D’Angelo, 2015. "A multivariate stochastic model to assess research performance," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 102(2), pages 1755-1772, February.
    5. Abramo, Giovanni & D’Angelo, Ciriaco Andrea & Soldatenkova, Anastasiia, 2016. "The ratio of top scientists to the academic staff as an indicator of the competitive strength of universities," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 10(2), pages 596-605.
    6. Abramo, Giovanni & D’Angelo, Ciriaco Andrea, 2014. "Assessing national strengths and weaknesses in research fields," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 8(3), pages 766-775.
    7. Abramo, Giovanni & D’Angelo, Ciriaco Andrea, 2015. "Evaluating university research: Same performance indicator, different rankings," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 9(3), pages 514-525.
    8. Abramo, Giovanni & D’Angelo, Ciriaco Andrea, 2016. "A comparison of university performance scores and ranks by MNCS and FSS," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 10(4), pages 889-901.
    9. Abramo, Giovanni & Cicero, Tindaro & D’Angelo, Ciriaco Andrea, 2013. "The impact of unproductive and top researchers on overall university research performance," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 7(1), pages 166-175.
    10. Giovanni Abramo & Ciriaco Andrea D’Angelo, 2014. "How do you define and measure research productivity?," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 101(2), pages 1129-1144, November.
    11. Abramo, Giovanni & D’Angelo, Ciriaco Andrea, 2020. "A novel methodology to assess the scientific standing of nations at field level," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 14(1).
    12. Abramo, Giovanni & D’Angelo, Ciriaco Andrea & Grilli, Leonardo, 2015. "Funnel plots for visualizing uncertainty in the research performance of institutions," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 9(4), pages 954-961.
    13. Waltman, Ludo, 2016. "A review of the literature on citation impact indicators," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 10(2), pages 365-391.
    14. Giovanni Abramo & Ciriaco Andrea D’Angelo & Anastasiia Soldatenkova, 2017. "How long do top scientists maintain their stardom? An analysis by region, gender and discipline: evidence from Italy," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 110(2), pages 867-877, February.
    15. Abramo, Giovanni & D’Angelo, Ciriaco Andrea & Soldatenkova, Anastasiia, 2017. "An investigation on the skewness patterns and fractal nature of research productivity distributions at field and discipline level," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 11(1), pages 324-335.
    16. Abramo, Giovanni & D’Angelo, Andrea Ciriaco & Grilli, Leonardo, 2016. "From rankings to funnel plots: The question of accounting for uncertainty when assessing university research performance," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 10(3), pages 854-862.
    17. Giovanni Abramo & Ciriaco Andrea D'Angelo, 2015. "The VQR, Italy's second national research assessment: Methodological failures and ranking distortions," Journal of the Association for Information Science & Technology, Association for Information Science & Technology, vol. 66(11), pages 2202-2214, November.
    18. Abramo, Giovanni & D'Angelo, Ciriaco Andrea & Di Costa, Flavia, 2019. "Diversification versus specialization in scientific research: Which strategy pays off?," Technovation, Elsevier, vol. 82, pages 51-57.
    19. Lutz Bornmann & Werner Marx, 2014. "How to evaluate individual researchers working in the natural and life sciences meaningfully? A proposal of methods based on percentiles of citations," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 98(1), pages 487-509, January.
    20. Abramo, Giovanni & D'Angelo, Ciriaco Andrea & Grilli, Leonardo, 2021. "The effects of citation-based research evaluation schemes on self-citation behavior," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 15(4).

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:infome:v:8:y:2014:i:1:p:89-97. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/joi .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.